The University of Michigan in China

Preface

The adventuresome, often courageous lives of the University of Michigan (U-M) students, teachers, and leaders in this book emerge marked by the historical dramas of their times, Chinese and American. But the motivating power that kept them on a steady course was almost always a desire to help their country, sometimes Christian teachings, and also a passion for education. While this movement from the University to build relations in China was getting started, there was another movement in the other direction, from China to the Western world. Some missionaries and diplomats brought Chinese culture back to the English-­speaking world. An example is the Scottish missionary, sinologist, and translator of the Chinese philosophical classics James Legge (1815–­1897). When I assumed my position as an assistant professor of Chinese philosophy at the University in 1964, I had students in my undergraduate courses consult some of Legge’s works. By this time, the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies was just getting under way and other China connections were being developed outside the University.

In the case of the earliest Chinese students, they were often aided by either a missionary from the United States or the generosity of someone at Michigan. Their graduate specialties were often in fields minimally present in China: medicine, physics, biological sciences, and international law. Two young female Chinese, Kang Cheng and Shi Meiyu, were adopted by a China-­based missionary from Ypsilanti. They entered the University of Michigan Medical School in 1892.

Among the historical events at this time was the pressure in the United States to prohibit Chinese immigration. But the University’s longest-­serving president, James B. Angell (38 years) was at the helm at the moment in which there was both a treaty awarding China the status of “most favored nation” and also increased pressure to block Chinese immigration, especially of laborers. In 1880, the secretary of state asked Angell to go to China as a minister to revise the United States’ China treaties. There were cocommissioners in the delegation. One favored a total ban on Chinese. Angell favored an open door, and that stance prevailed when he returned in 1882. But then US president Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred both skilled and unskilled laborers from entering the United States. That barrier facing Kang and Shi was surmounted with the political help of the Methodist Church and the influence of President Angell. The two women graduated with distinction, wearing Chinese garments at the ceremony. The act was not rescinded until World War II.

Back in China in 1900, the Boxer Rebellion of peasants, aimed at driving foreigners from China, had imperial backing. Once the rebellion was broken, with military support from Europe and Japan, China was required to pay indemnities to those powers. President Angell helped the US authorities channel their share of the money back into scholarships in the United States for Chinese students. Meanwhile, our two graduates, Kang and Shi, had set up a clinic at the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society in Jiangxi province, motivated by both Christian values and the nationalist sentiment to “save China through education.” They were paid less than the other staff and could not live in the missionary compound. Eventually they set up an independent clinic in Shanghai. After the successful anti-­Manchu rebellion of 1911, China entered a period of fracture under various warlords. That meant more danger for the doctors Kang and Shi, excitingly described in this book. Among the legacies from Shi Meiyu was a modern nursing education system, established in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, that aimed to lower the high infant mortality rate.

Since its founding in 1914 by Michigan graduate and regent Levi Barbour, 700 Asian women (among other nationalities: Indian, Chinese, Turkish) have received undergraduate scholarships or graduate fellowships. Many said that they not only are grateful for that opportunity but also have positive memories of their lives in Ann Arbor. One wrote that, immersed in her hospital work after graduation, she longed for “a good walk in the woods” back at the Michigan campus. The Nichols Arboretum has had that impact on many graduates. The Michigan Law School graduate (class of 1921) John C. H. Wu helped write the Republic of China’s constitution, translated the Daoist classic the Daodejing, and was a specialist in both traditional Chinese law and modern international law. He wrote that “my stay in Ann Arbor was among the happiest periods of my life.” I remember being on the Michigan campus in 1973 when the Chinese ping-pong team arrived and the warm welcome with which the Michigan students greeted the Chinese visitors.

During World War II, Robert E. Brown, U-M MD and MPH, treated malaria affecting workers on the Burma Road. Not discussed in detail in this book are Richard Edwards (later a professor of Chinese art) and Rhoads Murphey (later a professor of Asian history), who drove the charcoal-­fired ambulances and freight trucks in Yunnan province at the eastern end of the road.

The fate of Michigan graduates in China again had to flow with the current of the Maoist years. Back home, 1937 U-M physics PhD He Yizhen founded the Institute of Metal Research at the Beijing Chinese Academy of Sciences. During the 1966–­1976 period, Mao instigated a violent attempt to refocus the Chinese Communist Party leaders away from a so-­called capitalist economy emphasizing expertise and profit maximization and back toward the revolutionary spirit of the guerilla days. He called it the Cultural Revolution and closed all schools and universities, some for 10 years. Students and teachers were sent to the rural areas or deserts to do work with peasants. He Yizhen left the Academy of Sciences and did forced labor. Once Mao started China’s nuclear weapons program, the 1941 Barbour Fellow Wang Chengshu was posted to a nuclear research station in the Gobi Desert, where the isolation protected her from the fate of Dr. He. One Michigan-­trained ornithologist spent those years living in a cowshed.

As the relationship between the United States and China warmed in 1972, Michigan professor Alexander Eckstein and the nongovernmental organization he helped found, the National Committee on US-­China Relations, took a step on the road to rapprochement with the instigation of ping-­pong diplomacy. One morning in April 1973, I watched as the cheerful underdog American team played the stars from China in the top-­floor ballroom of the Michigan Union.

On a personal level, I will conclude with remarks that reveal the breadth of the University’s reception of Chinese students. After Mao’s death, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, was still wary about the dilution of “Communist purity.” A democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989 led to an episode of military repression, in which many students and others were killed. The Communist Party claimed the movement was led by two or three persons, the “Black Hands of Beijing.” Among them was the social scientist Chen Ziming. These so-­called instigators were given long prison sentences. One of my own small roles in fostering the education of Chinese students at the University of Michigan began then. I had a request from Chen Ziming to study with me by mail and by phone while he was in prison. After a lengthy negotiation with the dean of the graduate school, John D’Arms, and others, I received permission to accept Chen’s request. Allowing no publicity, I proceeded to line up two other U-M faculty members, and we all entered the teacher-­student relationship with Chen Ziming. Using a quiet route to send him the books and printed material, I made sure he did the homework and took the exams. One such route was Leonard Woodcock. America’s first ambassador to China (appointed in 1979) in the post–­World War II era, while he lived in Ann Arbor, Woodcock became one of those who aided in the physical transmission of materials for Chen’s studies. And Chen Ziming fulfilled his obligations. Twice he was released from prison on medical parole between 1994 and 1996. He continued his course work at home under house arrest, only to be imprisoned again for political activity. Released in 2002 on completion of his full term, he died of pancreatic cancer in 2014.

Chen’s degree became a cross-­continental relay, a feat of institutional and individual tenacity in the face of political opposition. The desire for education often succeeds in curious ways.

Donald J. Munro
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Chinese
April 7, 2017